aHa- Kayak Labs. I *thought* it might be a Kayak Labs boat, but they're so rare I thought it was unlikely. This was a small company started by a Russian immigrant. He made some novel boats with zippered sponsons that allowed you to vary the beam of the boat. He was also one of the first to use polyurethane for a hull fabric. Ralph wrote about the boats in his newsletter, but I've never seen one... until now.

From what I read, it was a very well made boat. I did get a sample of the hull fabric from the company shortly before they disappeared and it struck me as pretty tough. As for a seat- hard to say, as I haven't been able to find a photo showing the original setup. Looks like there isn't a floor, so you might want to construct a sling to suspend whatever seat you use just above the bottom of the boat. But a large foam seat might work well without a sling. You just want to avoid distorting the hull to much and creating excess drag. A sling could just be a piece of heavy nylon with velcro that wrapped around the lower longerons of the frame.

I really like the Feathercraft sling seat, which is a fairly rigid seat suspended by a sling. Best of both worlds. It has four points of suspension- two on each side. The upper points carry the weight, and the lower ones keep it from squeezing you.

Looking at that photo, I suppose you could make a board or frame that spanned the lower longerons and mount the seat on that. Simple.

Another seat option might be how Folbot does the Cooper (and I assume the other boats). They use industrial strength velcro to attach the seat to the keel. The fuzzy velcro goes on the keel and the hooks go on the bottom of the seat. I think it helps that the seat fits between the two longerons on either side of the keel as well. I've not had problems with my seat but I've only been paddling since July. The folks on the Folbot forum don't comment about it either so it seems to work well.

They were a small one-man operation that went out of business many years ago. Not too many boats out there, so far as I can tell. Ive never seen one, although I had some brief contact with the maker back in (I think) the 1990s.

the sling sounds awesome... ive been trying to find pics of them online to build my own

any tips?

I plan to set up my sling-seated Feathercraft Wisper sometime in the next couple of weeks. When I do so I will take a bunch of photos of it, installed and out of the boat, to show you how it is set up.

By the way, I just got back from the annual Greenland kayak training camp in Michigan and one of the other attendees had a red Kayak Lab tandem with center hatch that looked very much like your "new" boat, inside and out, so that may very well be what you have. It had no labels but I talked to the guy who had brought it and he identified it as a Kayak Lab. I wish I had taken some photos of it but I did not have my camera on me when I was talking to him about it and forgot to take shots later. I'll look at other attendees' shots as they post them on the training camp Facebook page and see if anyone else recorded it. I may be able to get his name as well, and he might be able to confirm the ID and send shots of the seats in his.

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